Sulki & Min (Seoul, South Korea)

"Definitely it would be better if, as a designer, you could work in a tight relationship with individuals from different backgrounds – art, photography, architecture, etc."

About:

The creative duo Sulki & Min is a collaboration between Seoul-based graphic designers Sulki Choi and Min Choi. Although they graduated from different universities, they both earned their MFA degrees in graphic design at Yale University in the US. After having been design researchers at the Jan van Eyck Academie in The Netherlands, they returned to South Korea and worked on various projects with local institutions.

Presenting our biggest-ever feature story! More than 50 of their favourite packaging designs by 42 creatives who specialise in packaging design – toughest of genres. Plus their thoughts on how to excel at it. This is one you’ll want to save.

Finally, Aesthetico: the much-awaited last issue of the Blueprint for a New World series … a call for an aesthetic awakening, a re-wilding of the capitalist imagination — an adjustment to the mood, the tone, the style and thrust of our lives that has to happen if we’re going to have any kind of a future on this planet.

In art, as in sex, size doesn’t matter. There are huge works of minimalism as well as mini-masterpieces of maximalism. Instead of containing the least number of elements, maximalism encompasses the most in a single work. If you are tired of being told that less is more and small is beautiful, try to letting it all hang out and rip up the rules!

In the penultimate issue of our Blueprint for a New World series, we take on the global smörgåsbord of red-alert headlines as the floorboards of the capitalist project give their last protesting creaks.

Integrating patterns into a brand's language is never an easy task. It can often add something aesthetically memorable. Playing devil's advocate on the other hand, it can also clutter and confuse. Discover how these creatives take on the challenge and level up various identities to new peaks.

Is your OS up to date? Good. How’s your WiFi connection? Great. Are you reading this hunched over in a cubicle? LOL. Or maybe huddled in a bomb shelter? Uh-oh. Are you ready for Reality 2.0? Yikes. Can’t quite kick your Facebook habit? That’s normal. Or perhaps you’re wondering about the meaning of life now that every human action is monitored, recorded and exploited by the data-industrial complex? Yeah. So are we.

This summer, an elite selection of extraordinary footballers finally comes together to play the most beautiful game on earth in COLORS 90 – Football. In this issue, a mechanical striker winds up to score at the 2014 RoboCup, a Saudi goalie dives for the save on a top secret pitch for women, and players from the streets of Sao Paulo to the fields of Dharamsala break out their bicycle kicks. For the 226 million footballers who play on streets, at school, at work, in jail and everywhere other than under the spotlight, COLORS presents the world’s most popular game as FIFA has never dared show it.

Editorial illustration is more than just an added extra to give a page of dense type eye-appeal — it can actually add significantly to the interpretation of a story, especially if it features a face. We asked 10 specialists to share their trade secrets with us.

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"To achieve good, timeless packaging, you have to enhance and embrace the personality of the product, in exactly the same way that clothes and accessories are used to express someone’s personal style."

Jasper really takes his job seriously to amplify, clarify and give insight to the story by ordering, structuring and using type and form strategically in search of the right tone of voice. Most of the time his work is based on straightforward graphical elements with a lot of attention paid to detail.

In Bed With Designers is collaborating with the New Majestic Hotel Singapore, a member of the renowned Design Hotels™ group, as a major event for creative minds. The In bed With Designers concept begins with a hotel room. Get your pajamas on and watch our designers transform the rooms into their own organized exhibits! A pop-up store is also erected at the location, where visitors and designers are able to merchandise their products. It is a unique chance for designers and buyers to establish new retail opportunities under an intimate and relaxed design atmosphere.

It all starts with the voice inside your head, with the reality that twists and turns and moves around. There's always somebody else looking at you from inside and there's a constant conversation with your friend and your enemy. EVILTWIN is a collaboration between photographer Paolo Testa and art director Anastasia Fokina – focused on the play between light and dark, shapes and positions, meanings of a melting reality inside our heads. Make-up artist: Carolina Antonini / Styling: Andrew Franco

“The main problem I find with a maximalist approach is how long it takes to create a piece. Being a commercial illustrator, I always have to work to really tight deadlines, so I’ve developed my style with these in mind. Traditional 3D modelling and sculpting can take ages, but as I don’t want my work to look ‘real’, I can process it much faster. I like to create my own stylized versions of real-world objects that are a lot quicker to model, and have more personality, too. Adjusting/balancing all the elements, textures, colours and lighting can still take a considerable while though, so I re-use a lot of settings and materials to save time.”

Hugo Ribeiro Design Studio aims to be a platform for the provision of designing environments, designing furniture, accessories, lighting and consulting. This will be a forum for generating ideas, innovation, transforming spaces and designing new concepts. Speciality from the studio showed a taste for various types of materials, combining them in different ways and combining the color to create appealing objects and large contraste.

Bomk's first edition of Aérotik sculptures, a series of collectable figures that come in Pink or Black is available for purchase starting 26 FEB, 2015! All pieces were entirely handmade by Bomk himself, each new statue bearing unique marks of mastic polishing, drill sculpting and spray or brush painting. From conception, to creation and packaging this is a fully studio-made creation.

"I’m not sure whether what I am doing is maximalist. It’s for other people to label it. The way my work is is because of where I am. The network, the society. But the subject – and message – should come from the artist’s very own spirituality."

MILLK is India’s first pleasure (play & leisure) center in Mumbai, that caters to both children and their parents. Spread over 8000 sq. ft. it boasts a play gym for children, along with a café and spa for adults. “It was a great task to work on MILLK as it was necessary to appeal to both children and parents. But, it turned out to be an exciting and memorable experience.” - Ramnathkar, Founder, Umbrella Design.

Laho (Lola Tinnirello) is a french graphic artist evolving in various fields such as illustration, graphic design, art direction, textile design and scenography. She's working alone or in collaboration and finds her inspiration into a huge and mysterious universe, composed of sacred mountains, interstellar animals and other colorful quirks.

“I don't believe in graphic design being only an expression of the designers’ personal vision, I think it's rather the solution of a communication/identity problem or wish, a translation through a very personal interpretation.”

OFFSET is a 3 day creative conference held annually in Dublin’s Bord Gáis Energy Theatre. Every year the very best of Irish and International creative professionals come together for a weekend of presentations, lectures, interviews and discussions. They take multi-disciplinary approach to curating OFFSET and feature industry leaders from the worlds of graphic design, animation, illustration, advertising, film, fashion and more.

Typography is a foundation element of their practice, and they look to letterforms to provide a specific tone to a project. They purposely do not specialize in any one thing, however, as it happens, a lot of their work has been with the arts. All their completed works are smart and functional, while maintaining their signature minimalist quality.

“The major challenge I’ve found with maximalism is the difficulty of controlling design elements. Often, it’s hard to know when you’ve crossed a line of ‘too much’. Physical spaces and installations are exciting, but because they can be so large and require so many resources, the ability to succeed in this space and in this style becomes exceedingly difficult.”